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Modern TV crime shows haven't been shy about mixing real-life tech news stories into their plots, from The Good Wife's take on Chinese Internet censorship to CSI: Miami going the macabre route in tackling Internet chat-room predators. Video games have seen their fair share of awkward crime-TV dramatizations as well, but rarely in as much of a ripped-from-the-headlines way as Law & Order: SVU did on Wednesday night.

True to form, SVU didn't raise the gaming-culture-on-TV bar in the slightest with its take on Chan culture, video games, and the most abusive users of the GamerGate hashtag. The results were laughable, but not just because of stilted acting and awkward attempts at being "down" with gaming culture. The episode also ended with an abrupt, exploitative scene that openly mocked women in the gaming world who still receive online abuse.

And to think, up to that point we had been having a pretty good time laughing at how ridiculous the episode turned out to be. Had we made up a "SVU does GamerGate" bingo card, we might have made out like bandits. The following bullet points all made appearances: swatting, doxing, a woman's public gaming appearance marred by death threats, wacky gaming phrases like "no reset button in the real world," the use of the phrase "social justice warrior" as a slur, and a fake website named, we kid you not, RedChanIt.

Pre-order Amazonian Warriors for Social Justice Warrior DLC?

As expected, the fictional woman at the receiving end of the episode's online, game-related harassment was an amalgam of real women in the games industry. The character Raina Punjabi (played by actress Mouzam Makkar) resembles Feminist Frequency host Anita Sarkeesian in no uncertain terms (hair pulled back, giant earrings, shown in online videos giving monologues). Punjabi is also frequently maligned because, in Ice-T's words, "a lot of gamers think she slept her way into the business," a not-so-veiled reference to the spurious genesis of the GamerGate hashtag in the first place.

Enlarge/ Actress Mouzam Makkar, seen here being swatted by the fictional NYPD.

NBC

Instead of a vague hashtag, however, Punjabi suffers her SVU harassment pretty directly, all thanks to Amazonian Warriors, the strategy game she's developing. "There’s nothing in the game for them to be angry about," Punjabi tells Detective Fin Tutuola (played by avid real-life gamer Ice-T). "Wage peace or war. Start a patriarchy or a matriarchy."

To his credit, Ice-T took a moment to describe a wider problem among the Internet's most hostile gaming commentators: "In their world, developers are like god. Some guys aren’t ready to give a girl that power." However, as the show's most obvious gaming fan, he also carried the burden of explaining the episode's gaming concepts and terms, both real ("[FPS campers] are all pieces of crap,") and fake ("FALs... failures at life"). His ridiculous description of the fake Amazonian Warriors game will probably go down in history as one of the five weirdest sentences ever spoken on television: "I read on Kotaku it’s better than Civ V with the 'Brave New World' expansion pack."

By the way, should you have a relative or tech-confused friend who still has no idea what GamerGate is, we're not sure we'd recommend this episode as an ideal teaching tool. While SVU slowed conversations down to roughly two miles per hour whenever a new bit of lingo came up and went to great lengths to talk about issues like doxing and swatting, the episode was still somehow an odd mix of condescension and utter tech-term obfuscation. Mostly, outsiders will probably view the episode as the kind of one-dimensional pop-culture takedown of nerdity we're all too used to, with lines like "it's like trying to find a geek in a geek stack" being the norm.

The episode's leaps in logic were the stuff of crime-TV legend. In one scene, detectives track down some assailants by teasing them with the promise of a doxing—which they would only reveal if they met in person. (There's only so much visual flair in a story about Chan culture if you don't invent reasons to meet in real life, I guess). In another scene, Punjabi insists that her online game's launch press conference must be opened to the public (and risk a violent attack), even though the conference was streamed online anyway.

“Women in gaming. What did I expect?”

In the case of that conference, Punjabi's situation had plenty in common with real-life threats Sarkeesian faced regarding public appearances. "If I [cancel], they’ve won," Punjabi says. "I’m showing the world I’m intimidated by cyber terrorists. I won’t make the same mistake Sony did [an apparent reference to The Interview]. Better to be called a bitch than a coward."

The episode's main conflict came from three apparent "hardcore" gamers who were addicted to a Call of Duty-styled FPS called Kill Or Be Slaughtered, affectionately referred to throughout the episode as KOBS. This trio threatened, kidnapped, and sexually assaulted Punjabi, all while mimicking scenes from the game—including a recreation of a KOBS "rape mod." Ice-T has to explain to detectives that the mod doesn't exist in the core game but is widely popular anyway. (We think that'll clear up a lot of grandparents' misconceptions about issues like Hot Coffee, Ice.)

Eventually, New York's finest rescue Punjabi and take down the bad guys, but not before Punjabi is shown in online videos being abused, tortured, and forced to malign the idea of women in the gaming industry at gunpoint: "I realize now that gaming is no place for females. So all you bitches should get out now. You are not wanted, you are not safe."

More stomach-turning than that is the episode's conclusion, which sees detectives asking Punjabi to testify at the trial of one of her assailants—because after being apprehended trying to shoot a cop, there's still enough room for reasonable doubt, I guess? After declining the request, Punjabi, still scarred and crying, tells detectives, "Women in gaming. What did I expect? I'm out."

What I didn't expect was an ending that clearly mocked the women it drew inspiration from. Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and others have recently posted about the online harassment they continue to receive and efforts they've put together to raise awareness and assist victims. They expect to keep making or talking about games and be part of a game-making community where diversity of product and opinion can thrive. They're not out.